Artist Profiles cont. Program Notes

Jakob Taylor, cello

Jakob Taylor, 25, is currently pursuing his Master of Musical Arts degree at the Yale School of Music under the tutelage of the esteemed cellist of the Emerson Quartet, Paul Watkins.

His career as a soloist and chamber musician has taken him to perform at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Stude Hall, Bargemusic, and Jordan Hall.

Jakob received his Master of Music degree at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music studying with Desmond Hoebig. He has also studied at the New England Conservatory and at The Juilliard School, with Paul Katz and Richard Aaron respectively. He is most recently the winner of the 2022 Yale School of Music Woolsey Concerto Competition, as well the 2020 Shepherd School of Music concerto competition. He is the recipient of the Harvey R. Russel Scholarship and Irving S. Gilmore Fellowship at Yale University.

He has spent his summers working and performing at the Taos School of Music, Music Academy of the West, Music@Menlo and Bowdoin International Music Festival, among others.

He is performing on a Bartolomeo Bimbi Cello Circa 1769, generously on loan to him by Jonathan Solars Fine Violins

Circuits mctee

Patrick Campbell Jankowski

Cindy McTee’s Circuits is a rare orchestral work that might be better known in its band incarnation. Written in 1990 for the Denton Chamber Orchestra, McTee adapted it shortly thereafter for wind ensemble, for which it has remained popular. As a spirited and zippy concert overture, the musical substance and character suit the title quite well. Percussion lays the groundwork for the continuous momentum churning throughout these quick-paced six minutes. Sections play off one another in brief repeating gestures and rhythmic ostinatos, with bombastic interjections in the brass and whirling linear lines in the woodwinds and strings. Melodic fragments come together into longer sinuous passages, the most pronounced of which emerges near the end in unison strings, before dissolving once again into sparks of light.

Sinfonia concertante prokofiev

Patrick Campbell Jankowski

This Sinfonia concertante has a meandering coming-of-age story, decades in the making and involving one very important player: the brilliant cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The prologue unfolds in Prokofiev’s Cello Concerto, Op. 58, which he completed in 1938, but which immediately fell flat after its premiere (owing to a lackluster performance). A young Rostropovich picked it up in 1947, bringing new life to the work in the composer’s eyes, inspiring him to adapt it into this “Symphony-Concerto,” dedicated to the cellist. It becomes an altogether more complex, challenging, and innovative work, with substantive thematic development and a monumental central movement requiring great stamina from soloist and orchestra alike. Prokofiev plays with form by placing this weightier, more expansive movement at the work’s center, bookended by a lyrical “slow movement” and a mercurial and at times humorous finale.

Concerto for Orchestra

bartók

Julia Clancy

Distraught over his native Hungary’s coziness with Nazi Germany, Bartók emigrated to the United States in 1940 while war raged in Europe. He settled in New York, where he faced a barrage of new problems, including ailing health, financial hardship, a declining career as a solo pianist, and a public that was increasingly indifferent to his music. In the spring of 1943, conductor Serge Koussevitzky learned of Bartók’s situation and, knowing the composer would be too proud to accept any form of charity, commissioned Bartók to compose something for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which premiered the Concerto for Orchestra with overwhelming success on December 1, 1944. The title “Concerto for Orchestra” seems to be an oxymoron, as a concerto is traditionally scored for a soloist with orchestral accompaniment. Bartók, however, evokes the genre by treating an array of individual instruments and sections of the orchestra as soloists. The virtuosity expected of concerto soloists is especially apparent in the brass playing during the fugato sections of the first movement and the devilishly fast sixteenth-note passages that the strings execute in the Finale. The second movement, “Presentando le coppie” (“Presentation of the Couples”), reflects the duo-concertante style. Five pairs of instruments (bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes, and muted trumpets) introduce themes in counterpoint, with members of each pair separated by a different interval. Bartók’s fascination with folk music pervades every movement of the work. Themes in the first movement, pentatonic and rhythmically free, are typical of early Hungarian folk songs. The second movement imitates the Yugoslav kolo (round dance), inspired by the folkloric duet performed on a pair of sopile (folk oboes). “Elegia,” the third movement, uses Romanian mourning songs, and the fourth movement’s Lydian mode is characteristic of Slovak folksongs. The irregular rhythms of the Finale evince Romanian instrumental folk music, traditionally played on the bagpipe, violin, and peasant flute.